Disable Smilies in This Post. Show Signature: include your profile signature. Only registered users may have signatures.

*If HTML and/or UBB Code are enabled, this means you can use HTML and/or UBB Code in your message.

If you have previously registered, but forgotten your password, click here.

T O P I C R E V I E W

saturn1b

New Space Museum in Colorado?

Well, that's the plan. Some of you have known about this plan for a while now. It's slow going with a lot of paperwork, red tape etc. But well worth all the effort.

We have a website up now and I welcome any input that will help me make this a better project. I certainly can't do this all on my own. We will need board members, volunteers, donations of all kinds and expert advice from folks like everyone here on collectSPACE.

We will be working on the 501c3 paperwork real hard over the next few months and hope to have our rating by the middle of next year.

Let me know if you have any thoughts, either via direct e-mail, through this posting or through the museum website. Wish us luck, it's not going to be easy!

saturn1b

After months and months of waiting for all the paperwork to be filled out, filed and reviewed, we have finally been granted our 501c3 non-profit status from the IRS! That means we have the go ahead to launch our fundraising campaigns using the Giant Rocket Bank etc.

We are looking at a 31,000 sq. ft. building here in Southern Colorado. A perfect building in a perfect spot.

Thanks for the help, advice and support I've received from some of you. Anyone interested in helping out can visit our website. We now have a PayPal link as well as a separate link to another site that will help raise a few dollars. This is going to be a multi-million dollar effort so every cent is appreciated (and tax deductible too)!

While I was at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs last April, I talked with 23 different aerospace companies that are willing to help us out in a number of different ways. So that will be a huge help in itself. So wish us luck and we hope that you can come visit us when we're up and running.

saturn1b

The latest acquisition for our space museum has arrived! We are honored to be chosen as one of only 30 recipients throughout the country to receive an actual flown space shuttle tire. We haven't even acquired our building yet so we're very pleased that NASA has the faith in us to realize that we are on our way to putting up a new museum here in Colorado.

The tire was flown on STS-106 in Sept. 2000 on Space Shuttle Atlantis. STS-106 was a mission to the ISS that delivered supplies and did maintenance just before the station was to be occupied.

We have the tire on loan for three years with the option to renew the loan for another three years. We are now working on a complete display of mission info (crew, mission stats, etc.) to go along with the tire. Any suggestions are certainly welcome.

saturn1b

The Southern Colorado Space Museum & Learning Center has just applied for a $50,000 grant from the Pepsi Refresh 'Project. Our application has been approved and now we need help from our 'space friends' in order to receive the grant.

The way it works is by the public voting for their favorite projects. We are asking people from all over the globe to vote for this endeavor. We simply need people to go to this website and vote for the space museum project. Voting runs through the month of July and you can vote for up to 10 of your favorite projects every day.

You know how it works, you send it to your friends and colleagues and they send it to their friends and colleagues, etc. Put it on your Facebook page, Twitter, MySpace and any other site you can think of. We sure appreciate every vote and I hope we can count on the collectSPACE community to help us land this grant. We just can't do it without your help.

MarylandSpace

Steve--I just voted and appreciate your work on this project.

saturn1b

First of all, the Southern Colorado Space Museum & Learning Center wants to thank all of you who have voted for our $50,000 grant proposal from the Pepsi Refresh Project. We have moved up about 60+ positions in just the first week, but we have a long way to go and only three more weeks to make it happen, so we urge you to keep voting for us and passing the information on to your friends and colleagues. You can vote once a day for the museum.

We may never have an opportunity like this again so please go to the site and give us your vote. You're welcome to leave comments too if you wish, we'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions just send an e-mail.

We're also open to any ideas as to how to spread the word about this effort. We will be attempting to get the word out to local radio and TV stations as well as having folks put it out there on their Facebook page, Twitter, MySpace etc. So thanks again for all of your support, we appreciate every single vote.

saturn1b

Well we FINALLY have some great news to pass on to the collectSPACE world!

All the effort we've been putting into this museum thing has finally paid off. After years of searching, brainstorming, meeting with countless folks and negotiating, we have teamed up with the Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum here in Southern Colorado.

They have offered us space in their brand new 20000 sq. ft. building to start our museum effort. They just happen to have one of the helicopters that was involved in the recovery of Alan Shepard and his Freedom 7 capsule so our space is in the same area as this helicopter.

Since we are right in the middle of building the full scale mock up of a Mercury capsule, it was a no brainer to focus on making ours as close to the Freedom 7 configuration as possible. We still have quite a way to go on the capsule build but I'll get back to that on the other thread.

Right now we are frantically building display cases for some of the artifacts that are on display or soon to be. I'll take some photo's this weekend. We have the Space Shuttle tire on display along with a thermal tile, a pre-Challenger life vest and a display case full of Alan Shepard/Freedom 7 memorabilia to go along with the chopper.

Soon to be put on display are a couple of articles from the F-1 engine and a nice piece of foam from the Shuttle's external tank and a section of wing leading edge of the type that was used in the investigation after the Columbia disaster.

This week we will also be filling a display case with nothing but Apollo 11 stuff to help commemorate July 20.

I have to thank everyone from cS who has donated items to our cause over the past couple of years. Thank for your confidence that we could pull this off. Many of you wished to remain anonymous and we certainly respect that. Others wished to wait until we actually had a building to house the collection, we sure respect that as well.

So now we have it and those of you wishing to donate anything... now's the time. All donations are tax deductible too. Whether you wish to remain anonymous or don't mind getting credit for a donation, we're accepting anything that comes our way.

We also have a had a number of astronauts that have been kind enough to offer items from their personal collections.

We'll keep you posted as to our progress. Once again, thanks to all of you for helping to get this effort launched. This has been way more work than I thought it would be but now the fun begins.

saturn1b

Here are a few photo's of some of the displays in the new museum area.

Space Shuttle main landing gear tire flown on Atlantis to the ISS.

Space shuttle tile display

Pre-Challenger era life vest

This is a collection of Freedom 7 stuff that sits in front of the Navy's Seabat helicopter that assisted in the recovery of Freedom 7.

This case was just set up to commemorate Apollo 11.

saturn1b

Okay, It's been way too long since we posted any of the new artifacts on display at the museum. We really need to thank all of you on collectSPACE who have helped us out in any way to make some of these displays happen.

Over the next few weeks we'll be adding a bunch of photos to show you what we've been up to. If any of you have any inside information on any of the items shown, we'd love to hear it.

We are especially interested in seeing photos of the items in use. So we welcome any input.

This ISS experiment is on loan from CTD Corp. here in Colorado. It was used to test a new type of hinge being developed for use in space.

saturn1b

Ken Bowersox was kind enough to send us his Russian flight coveralls. These spent 3 months aboard the ISS. We'll post some of his other items next.

saturn1b

Here are a few more items from on of Ken Bowersox's missions. Some space food, a couple of personal items, silverware and a flown mission patch.

saturn1b

Here's one of our most recent acquisitions, an inner glove restraint assembly. Maybe someday we'll get a complete glove.

Lou Chinal

Hey Steve, how's the Mercury capsule coming along?

saturn1b

Hey Lou, and anyone else that's wondering, I have built a roller machine (read contraption) that I thought would roll the dimples in the shingles but had less than desirable results. I'll post a photo of the thing.

Now I'm back to plan A which is to fabricate a separate die for each size dimple and see how that goes.

I'm getting closer but it's pretty frustrating. I WILL figure it out though. Stay tuned.

saturn1b

Here's what I came up with to roll the dimples into the panels. I really thought that this was the ticket but couldn't work the bugs out of it.

And here is where I turned back to plan A. A simple press with a die in it. This seemed to work a little better but I'm still fine tuning things. Suggestions are certainly welcome.

saturn1b

Here's another item we recently added to the display. It is a protective blanket for a Space Shuttle experiment. This is one of the items that we'd like to find a photo of while it was in use.